I'm Not Rappaport

I was a certain man for eighty years, now I want to be something else.

Clunky and ungainly stage adaptation makes a mistake of presenting the play's fanciful situations with a thudding literality - sequences no doubt intended to be poignant come off as ridiculous and laughable; an underdeveloped and somewhat seedy subplot for Nelson seriously throws the film off course in the third act. A great shame, because when the film is just Matthau and Davis talking, it becomes a riveting experience, with both men excelling in a kind of refreshed Lemmon-Matthau dynamic.

One more play mal-adapted for the big screen, the concept is ok, and the characters are good. Too bad Gardner couldn't write dialog to fit a movie and it borders on bad because of it. Someone needs to tell Gardner that there's a difference between the stage and the screen and changes must be made or it will fail.

51.000